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Former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan arrives at the federal courthouse for his arraignment on on charges including racketeering, bribery, extortion and money laundering. Mark Moran / The Citizens' Voice

Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella arrives at the federal courthouse for his arraignment on on charges including racketeering, bribery, extortion and money laundering. Mark Moran / The Citizens' Voice

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SCRANTON — Former Luzerne County judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan appeared in federal court this morning for the first time since a grand jury slammed them with a 48-count indictment last week for their alleged involvement in a kids-for-cash conspiracy.

Ciavarella, 59, and Conahan, 57, were arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas M. Blewitt on charges including racketeering, bribery, extortion and money laundering and pleaded not guilty.

Federal prosecutors requested new bail conditions including electronic monitoring for the judges, claiming there was evidence they tried to protect assets that could be seized in the case and that the new charges in the indictment carried sentences of nearly 600 years as opposed to the 25 years the judges faced on the original charges.

“This a different situation with much more at stake, said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Houser.

Houser said Conahan had been secretly recorded in July 2008 boasting that he was “judgment proof.”

“Let them sue me. I don’t have anything in my name,” Conahan said, according to Houser.

In 2008, before charges were filed, Ciavarella sold his Mountain Top home and gave the proceeds to his daughter to a buy a residence in Kingston where the judge lives now with his family, Houser said.

Defense attorneys argued the government was aware of all the judges’ assets and any transfers they might have made to family members, so those assets were available in the event of forfeiture.

The judges had obeyed all previous conditions, they argued.

Blewitt decided to retain the current bail conditions set in February by U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik, allowing the judges to remain free on bail backed by the $700,000 Florida condominium owned by their wives and restricting their travel to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Both judges declined comment as they left the courtroom.

Reporters and photographers swarmed the former jurists as they strode into the federal courthouse earlier this morning, their first appearance for a formal proceeding here since they pleaded guilty to an initial pair of charges in February.

The former judges’ saga, originally destined for a swift resolution by mid-summer, morphed into a full-fledged legal drama last month.

The federal judge presiding over the case, 83-year-old Edwin M. Kosik, rejected the plea agreements Ciavarella and Conahan had signed in exchange for their admissions of guilt.

Kosik ruled the sentences were too lenient and Conahan and Ciavarella had failed to fully accept responsibility for their alleged wrongdoing.

Ciavarella and Conahan are accused of accepting payments from the builder and a former co-owner of two for-profit juvenile detention centers in Pittston Township and Butler County that earned $30 million from county contracts.

Prosecutors accused Conahan, the former president judge, of closing a county-owned center to clear the way for the Pittston Township center in 2003 and guaranteed that juveniles would be lodged there.

Ciavarella, who presided over the county’s juvenile court for 12 years, pressured staffers to recommend detention for juveniles in cases in which it was "unreasonable and unwarranted" and failed to fully inform juveniles of their right to counsel, prosecutors said.

After he was charged in January, Ciavarella made several public statements denying that he had a "quid pro quo" agreement under which he received cash for jailing juveniles in the for-profit centers. He argued his only crime was failing to report the payments on federal tax returns and state financial disclosure statements.

In rejecting the judges' plea agreements, Kosik cited Ciavarella's "quid pro quo" argument and Conahan's reported reluctance to cooperate with federal probation officers as evidence that the pair had not fully accepted responsibility for what has become known as the "kids-for-cash" scandal.

Days after Kosik rejected the plea agreements Ciavarella and Conahan withdrew their guilty pleas, clearing the way for a federal grand jury sitting in Harrisburg to issue the case’s most thunderous salvo yet.

Under the plea agreements, Conahan and Ciavarella were each guaranteed 87 months in prison.

If the former judges are convicted on all counts in the indictment, they could face up to 597 years behind bars. According to G. Robert Blakey, the University of Notre Dame professor who drafted the Organized Crime Control Act, the former judges will more likely spend 20 years each in prison.

23 posted comments

Did they plead not guilty to all charges? If so, that would prove how honesty these jerks are!! Isn.t it also amazing that Atty Flora gets the cream of the crop to represent? He has Ciavarella, and I think Banks too.Should put them all in the same cell.

It is all about staying out of jail for as long as possible. So what if they get 20 or 200 years in jail. Staying out for as many years as possible is now the goal. The trial and appeals will take years. They got over 8 free months out of jail so far. Only now has the clock started ticking. They are playing the FBI, IRS and the system like a fine tuned fiddle.